Enterprise Twitter: Fad Or Tipping Point?

Collaboration and Content Strategies

May, 2009 -- Social messaging, sometimes referred to as micro-blogging, has become incredibly popular on the Internet, exemplified by soaring use of consumer services such as Twitter. Twitter’s growing audience has raised questions as to whether such communication models are applicable within the enterprise. Strategists are considering social messaging as a means to improve not only information sharing and collaboration but also facilitate social networking and community building. There are concerns however. How does social messaging conflict with ongoing unified communications efforts (e.g., instant messaging)? What level of security and compliance requirements are there for these tools? Join Principal Analyst Mike Gotta of Burton Group along with CEO Tim Young of Socialcast, and CEO David Sacks of Yammer, as they discuss all of these topics and address questions from audience participants.

Catalyst Preview: Whither SOA: What’s Next?

Application Platform Strategies

May, 2009 -- The demise of SOA is tragic. But, enough mourning! Organizations still desperately need to make architectural improvements to their application portfolios. Service-orientation is still a prerequisite for rapid integration of data and business processes and for simplification of the IT environment; and it’s a foundational architecture for any externalization of IT such as SaaS and cloud computing. So, why is service modeling so neglected for more technical architecture activities? In this TeleBriefing, Analyst Richard Watson previews this essential half-day topic from the 2009 Catalyst conference in San Diego, 27-31 July.

Cloud Computing - An Introduction Event

Cloud Computing

May, 2009 -- What is cloud computing? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is it safe to use? What are the usage and pricing models? Is this hype or can this help my business? Join Jamie Lewis, CEO and Research Chair, and Drue Reeves, VP and Research Director, as they describe Burton Group's latest coverage area: Cloud Computing. Attendees will gain a strong foundational understanding of cloud computing, plus learn how to take advantage of Burton Group's research and advisory services for all of their cloud needs.

The Building Security in Maturity Model (BSIMM) and your Software Security Program

Security and Risk Management Strategies

May, 2009 -- Developed by Fortify and Cigital, the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM) is meant as a guide for building and evolving a software security initiative. Based on a study of nine large enterprise software security programs (including those of Adobe, Depository Trust Clearing Corporation [DTCC], EMC, Google, Microsoft, QUALCOMM, and Wells Fargo) it identifies key software security roles, 110 activities in twelve practices, as well as the ten core activities that all programs studied carry out. Citigal's Sammy Migues will join analysts Ramon Krikken (SRMS) and Kirk Knoernschild (APS) to discuss the model, and how it fits security and development practices in other enterprises.

Business Continuity and Roles: Getting More Business Value from Identity Management

Identity and Privacy Strategies

April, 2009 -- In the upcoming perspective document “Roles and Business Continuity: A Fertile Exchange,” Burton Group explores the challenges of identity management, business continuity, and identifies how roles could be used to demonstrate business alignment. In this interactive discussion, Alice Kaltenmark, Reed Elsevier Service Continuity Manager and Kevin Kampman, Burton Group Senior Analyst, will discuss how to effectively communicate the business value of identity management and business continuity planning to business management. They will address challenges such as attestation and compliance, privileges and entitlements, relationships and responsibilities, incident management, and identifying the overlap between people, business continuity, and strategic goals.

Mobile Handheld Policies: Permissive or Restrictive?

Network and Telecom Strategies

April, 2009 -- Mobile devices like smartphones are essential to today’s dynamic enterprise. However, their small size and portability makes them tempting targets for theft. Enterprises recognize that the information on these devices is more valuable than the hardware and software that make them work. As a result, most companies have security policies that dictate the type of device and the methods for connecting to enterprise IT resources. However, these policies create friction between IT and employees who wish to take advantage of newer technologies, such as the iPhone. In this TeleBriefing, Service Director Michael Disabato examines these polices and suggests alternatives.

A Case Study in Bridging Silos, using MODS (the Methodology for Overcoming Data Silos)

Data Management Strategies

April, 2009 -- Eliminating silos has proven to be an intractable problem. SOA is an effort to eliminate process silos, but this effort has stalled, largely because of the difficulties inherent in process integration. Enterprise-wide applications are an effort to subsume small silos into big ones, which in actual practice complicates the problem of silos. A newly proven approach is to reconcile the data between the silos – make data consistent so that data flows smoothly between silos. In this TeleBriefing, DMS Research Director Lyn Robison presents a case study in bridging silos successfully.

Reducing the Footprint of Data Using Data Deduplication

Data Center Strategies

April, 2009 -- The efficient storage of data is of increasing concern to administrators as primary, backup, and archival data grows. While many technologies and methodologies exist for improving storage efficiency, data deduplication stands out as one of the most effective. The application of deduplication technologies enhances the efficient use of storage equipment – a crucial benefit considering the current economic conditions. Selecting deduplication architectures and resultant implementations from the many available possibilities can be challenging. In this Data Center Strategies TeleBriefing, Senior Analyst Gene Ruth explores deduplication technologies, architectures, and their application to help administrators select a solution that is suitable to their unique requirements.

Open Source Communication, Collaboration, and Content Management: Cutting-Edge Innovation, Low-Cost Imitation, or Both?

Collaboration and Content Strategies

March, 2009 -- Open source software is moving up the enterprise stack to provide communication, collaboration, and content management (3C) solutions. Among several factors, the combination of well-executed open source projects and inexpensive Internet services is fueling the development of cutting-edge and low-cost solutions that are scalable and robust, and which operate websites and services used by millions on the Internet. In this Burton Group TeleBriefing, Senior Analyst Larry Cannell provides insight into what is driving the development of open source 3C and how enterprises should approach its use.

Data Leakage Prevention, Information Labeling and Access Control

Security and Risk Management Strategies

March, 2009 -- Data leakage prevention (DLP) and DLP tools are rising fast on the corporate radar as a means to discover locations of sensitive information. This awareness aids enterprises in classifying information (i.e., labeling). Bridging this awareness to the ability to provide access control consistent with workers' roles in the organization remains a major challenge. In this TeleBriefing, Doug Simmons, Burton Group's Vice President of Consulting will share insight on what customers and vendors are doing to bridge that gap.

Cloud Application Architecture: Re-Building Applications for the Cloud

Application Platform Strategies

March, 2009 -- The Cloud promises to bring infinite scalability, unlimited availability, and increased responsiveness. Can applications realize cloud benefits through a simple off-premise server migration? Does Cloud require developers to re-write applications or port applications to proprietary Platform as a Service (PaaS) environments? In this presentation, Chris Haddad, Vice President of Burton Group’s Application Platform team, will detail cloud application architecture patterns, cloud application frameworks, portability and migration strategies, and deployment topology considerations. The session will answer the following questions:

• How does Cloud Application Architecture compare to web application, client-server, and desktop architectures?
• When is Cloud Application Architecture the appropriate choice?
• What application frameworks and development environments should teams use to build Cloud applications?
• What architecture roadmap should be chosen to make applications Cloud ready?

Network Behavior Analysis

Security and Risk Management Strategies

March, 2009 -- Monitoring activity on our networks is something every enterprise needs to do. Network behavior analysis moves beyond looking for known bad signatures of attacks and into the realm of understanding what is happening on the network from day to day. While NBA is not a complete replacement for signature-based intrusion detection or prevention systems, it can augment them to provide a more complete view of the network. NBA technology is not just a security tool - networking teams can also benefit from the use of NBA to analyze how systems and applications are used and to assist in troubleshooting.

Mobile Phone Service Futures: Femtocells or WLANs?

Network and Telecom Strategies

March, 2009 -- Proponents of “fixed mobile convergence” (FMC) sometimes tout the future ability of mobile phone users to seamlessly roam between mobile/cellular operator networks and wireless LANs. This promises to save money, improve operator spectrum use, and improve reception within offices and homes. But such FMC requires that mobile phones include WLAN capabilities, and that WLANs possess service quality good enough for VoIP. So as a WLAN-free alternative, several vendors and mobile operators are beginning to offer “femtocells” – small cellular base stations that businesses or residential users can deploy in-building, and that can leverage wireline Internet broadband connections for backhaul. In this TeleBriefing, Research Director Dave Passmore will examine the pros, cons, and implications of femtocells vs. WLAN use by mobile phones.

Provisioning Market Landscape 2009: What's Hot and What's Not?

Identity and Privacy Strategies

March, 2009 -- Today's headlines are scattered with announcements of mergers and acquisitions, reductions in workforce, and organizational failures. As a result provisioning solutions have once again taken center stage; never has the need for a provisioning solution been more profound. In this TeleBriefing, Senior Analyst Lori Rowland will discuss the provisioning market landscape and reveal the results of Burton Group’s recent competitive analysis. She will also be providing insight into technology trends and customer experiences and making suggestions on how organizations can realize a greater return on their provisioning investment.

It's All About The Data

Data Management Strategies

February, 2009 -- Data is a mess and getting worse. Our approach to data is just not working. As Einstein said “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” It is time to step back and take a different look at data, a much broader look. We need to change our thinking about data in order to take a different approach to its management and get the data right. In this TeleBriefing, Burton Group Analyst Noreen Kendle presents an insightful perspective on data, outside the limited view of technology.

Demystifying the Cloud: Introduction to the Cloud Tiered Architecture

Data Center Strategies

February, 2009 -- Cloud computing is changing the economics of IT. Many organizations look to the cloud as a potential cost-savings boon by moving internally hosted IT services to external hosting providers. Other IT organizations view the cloud as a potential disaster recovery plan or as on-demand capacity to boost business continuity and customer service levels. But cloud computing suffers from confusion and hype. Multiple definitions, competing vendor offerings, undefined risks, and new business models obscure cloud computing, slowing down adoption. Insightful IT organizations are taking a closer look. In this DCS TeleBriefing, Research Director Drue Reeves will define the cloud, its characteristics, and layout a tiered architecture that brings the cloud into perspective.

IBM Lotusphere 2009: Resonating Beyond the IBM Faithful?

Collaboration and Content Strategies

February, 2009 -- For 2009, two of the major themes of collaboration and content technologies are cutting costs and social networking in the enterprise. In this TeleBriefing, the Burton Group CCS team will take a hard look at IBM’s strategy and technologies (as described at Lotusphere 2009) in relation to these themes.

• Does Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 hit the mark in helping enterprises with expensive utility of e-mail?
• Will Sametime provide cost cutting advantages with a mature unified communications solution?
• How are IBM’s three collaboration software-as-a-service offerings doing and will they succeed?
• Does IBM have what it takes to deliver enterprise social networking?
• Is Symphony a viable productivity suite?
• Can IBM’s portals and mashups technologies make a critical difference for the enterprise this year?

SOA is Dead: Long Live Services

Application Platform Strategies

February, 2009 -- Many service oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives have stalled or failed, and with the impending 2009 budget cuts, prospects for SOA look bleak. Except in rare situations, SOA has failed to deliver its promised benefits. It’s time to face reality: the term “SOA” now carries too much baggage. It’s time to declare that SOA is dead and move on to more the practical matter of bringing up its offspring: Services. In this telebriefing, Research Director Anne Thomas Manes will examine the myths and misconceptions that derailed SOA efforts, provide guidance for salvaging value, and supply actionable direction for future efforts.

Leveraging Event and Log Information: Customer and Industry Efforts to Make Progress

Security and Risk Management Strategies

January, 2009 -- Houston, we have a problem: A deficit of globally useful event and log standards is exacerbating compliance, operations, and protection challenges. In this TeleBriefing, Principal Analyst Dan Blum will moderate a panel of industry experts discussing standardization efforts such as the Common Event Expression (CEE) initiative. The panel will also provide recommendations on what organizations should about event, log, and audit management internally while pushing the industry towards a solution.

Mobility in the Enterprise: Experiences and Trends

Network and Telecom Strategies

January, 2009 -- Many enterprises are struggling to support the evolving mobile employee. The employee wants to take advantage of new mobile devices such as the the Apple iPhone. They want to access the corporate network and run enterprise applications at any time and from any location. However, the IT department is struggling with questions such as: How do they ensure mobile device/data security? How do they manage mobile devices? And, how do they control expenses? In this TeleBriefing, Burton Group Senior Analyst Paul DeBeasi analyzes the results from his research on how enterprises are supporting the evolving mobile employee.

Turning into the Wind

Identity and Privacy Strategies

January, 2009 -- As the economic climate continues to deteriorate, a new set of issues - mostly cost and value issues - is forcing changes in organizations' planning assumptions. Burton Group's Identity and Privacy team will survey the state of play as of the end of 2008 and discuss the following topics:

• The importance of IdM in an environment of downsizing and M&A
• The increasing importance of vendor viability
• How to look for the cost of identity - and how to reduce it
• The importance of the emerging identity services market
• Dusting off shelfware and leveraging existing technology to solve IdM problems
• Using your compliance program to reduce IdM cost
• The growing cost of privacy breaches and privacy compliance

Generalized and Detailed Data Models: Seeking the Best of Both Worlds

Data Management Strategies

December, 2008 -- General data models are useful because they encourage the creation of re-usable software artifacts. Detailed data models are useful because they help users to accurately and completely articulate their information needs. IT shops should seeks a "best-of-both-worlds" approach, but this is frequently difficult because of limited support from tool vendors and conflicting advice from data-modeling gurus. In this TeleBriefing, Burton Group Senior Analyst Joe Maguire examines the trade-offs that data modelers confront when choosing between these two styles of modeling, and offers advice on how to manage these trade-offs.

Honey, I Shrunk the Data Center

Data Center Strategies

December, 2008 -- In this TeleBriefing, Data Center Strategies Compute Analyst Nik Simpson takes a look at some of the technologies and issues associated with high-density compute environments. Issues examined: Getting the right balance between server density, memory, and I/O capacity; the myth of density in the typical data center as organizations run into the power and cooling “wall”; I/O virtualization developments designed to simplify connectivity and improve utilization of data center fabrics; and the impact of cloud computing models on server hardware design.

Will the Traditional Productivity Suite Still Matter in 2010?

Collaboration and Content Strategies

December, 2008 -- Bill Gates once described Word for Windows 1.0 as “the word processor designed for the 1990s.” Now, we’re within sight of the 2010s and Office v13, but are we still using the word processor of the 1990s? Or more accurately, are we still caught in the paradigm of the tools of the 1990s (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, e-mail), even though authoring needs have evolved? The core authoring model is under strain as readers, both inside and outside the enterprise, now expect content to be fresh, findable, representative of a collective view, and delivered in a variety of content forms beyond documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. In this CCS TeleBriefing, Service Director Craig Roth will describe five trends impacting the way information workers create content: collaborative authoring, content reuse, living documents, freshness preference, and content landmines.

Service Containers: Evolving SOA Infrastructure

Application Platform Strategies

December, 2008 -- Despite most platform vendors positioning their ESB as a necessary and sufficient SOA platform, more choices than ever exist for hosting XML-based services. Look around! Many organizations possess infrastructure with evolving service container functionality, such as application servers, data services platforms and even DBMSs. Application Platform Strategies analyst Richard Watson examines requirements for service containers and assesses the wide range of product alternatives.

Security in Cost Cutting Times

Security and Risk Management Strategies

November, 2008 -- There's been no end of economic and financial news in the U.S., Europe, and beyond in 2008. Several security trends have emerged or been amplified as a result, not the least of which is the need to control expense. In this TeleBriefing, Burton Group's Security and Risk Management analyst team will hold a panel on "Security in a Cost Cutting Environment." This free-form conversation will cover...

• Green IT, consolidation, and virtualization: they remain hot (because of cost-cutting) even when other IT budgets might be holding. What are the implications for security?
• As security spending gets more heavily scrutinized, how can we help management understand the protection budget? What matters and why? How do metrics help justify priorities?
• Auditors tend not to say, "the economy is suffering; I'll go light on you." How can we maintain a compliant shop amid cutting and frazzled staff?
• When IT seeks optimization/cost cutting via cloud computing, SaaS, and outsourcing (essentially outsourcing risk that needs compensating controls), what changes should we make?

IPv4 Address Exhaustion: An Inconvenient Truth

Network and Telecom Strategies

November, 2008 -- In the late 90's a crisis caused a call to action among IETF engineers – the Internet would exhaust its address space by 2000. The call to action produced two solutions. Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR) was the first and it averted the crisis. IPv6 was the second. CIDR moved the timetable for address exhaustion to 2037 or beyond; today we estimate 2010-2012. In this TeleBriefing, Senior Analyst Jeff Young looks at issues that surround IPv6 and its deployment and predicts what will happen when all IPv4 space is assigned.

Fireside Chat with the IdPS Team

Identity and Privacy Strategies

November, 2008 -- As we close out the last half of a very eventful year, please join the Burton Group Identity and Privacy Strategies team as they share thoughts on the IdM outlook for 2009, recently developing trends in specific technology areas, and a look back on insights from the just completed Catalyst conference in Prague. This TeleBriefing also occurs during the annual research planning session, so you will get an early glimpse of research priorities and the service themes for 2009.

IT Metrics: How Useful Is The Information That IT Produces?

Data Management Strategies

November, 2008 -- Typical metrics leave IT leadership with no idea of the IT department's true impact on the business. Most IT metrics only measure things that are easy to measure, such as project completion, system defects, and operational uptime. Unfortunately, these metrics fail to indicate the quality and usefulness of the information that IT systems produce for the business. In this TeleBriefing, DMS Research Director Lyn Robison offers ways to establish IT metrics that measure the value of the information that IT systems produce.

Achieving Storage Efficiency

Data Center Strategies

November, 2008 -- As data continues to grow unabated, so does the electrical power and cooling needed to maintain the storage equipment to contain that data. As a consequence, and due to the rising cost of electrical power, a significant portion of the total cost of ownership of a storage ecosystem is now associated with its related power and cooling infrastructure. Thus, IT organizations must consider, now more than ever, the consequences of the additional electrical power, cooling and floor space to support existing or additional storage equipment. By applying both storage container efficiency and data reduction techniques and technologies, IT organizations can achieve dramatic improvements in efficiency as compared to an un-optimized storage system. This TeleBriefing examines storage technologies, strategies and methodologies and their ability to contribute to a power – and thus cost - efficient storage ecosystem.

Software as a Service Enterprise E-mail: Get Ready to Go Beyond the Grind

Collaboration and Content Strategies

October, 2008 -- SaaS is poised to reshape the enterprise e-mail market. Software as a service (SaaS) provides enterprises options for deploying e-mail systems that deliver levels of service to fit individual needs and offload overworked IT departments. Established enterprise e-mail product vendors IBM and Microsoft are deploying new SaaS-based services in response to newcomers like Google, and Yahoo!. The coming SaaS wars are heating up as Cisco has recently joined the fray through their acquisition of PostPath. This TeleBriefing by Analyst Bill Pray outlines opportunities and approaches to offload enterprise e-mail services to SaaS solutions.

PCI: A Candid Interview

Security and Risk Management Strategies

October, 2008 -- The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) tells merchants “what” to do. In this TeleBriefing, Analyst Randall Gamby will have a candid discussion on “how” to do PCI with Chris Mark, CEO of The Aegenis Group. The Aegenius Group both trains and educates merchants and Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs) for two of the major credit card brands. The discussion will include how PCI compliance affects your enterprise security initiatives, the role of the QSA and what to look for in selecting one, how QSAs conduct an assessment, how a “risk-based” approach is being adopted by the PCI DSS, and other PCI topics.

Irrationality & Predictability - Management and The Economy

Executive Advisory Program

October, 2008 -- Jack Santos and Dan Ariely (author of "Predictably Irrational") discuss strange behaviors when a faltering economy meets stressed out business and IT managers.

Key Performance Indicators for the Enterprise

Network and Telecom Strategies

October, 2008 -- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which include Service Level Indicators (SLIs), indicate whether performance goals are being met. This TeleBriefing, by Senior Analyst Eric Siegel, discusses the use of KPIs in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and for rapid incident classification, giving best practices for their precise definition and statistical treatment (especially for the classical networking KPIs of latency, jitter, availability, and workload) along with best practices for their implementation.

An Introduction to Access Certification

Identity and Privacy Strategies

October, 2008 -- Due to regulatory and compliance pressures, the ongoing review of user entitlements in critical business systems has become practically a mandatory requirement for all enterprises. In this TeleBriefing, senior analyst Ian Glazer will discuss common techniques and trends of access certification. As a preview to his upcoming report, he will also explore the risk mitigation value of access certification and ways to derive more of this value from existing processes.

Ten Axioms of Data Management

Data Management Strategies

September, 2008 -- Information is the better half of IT. The technology half of IT has garnered so much attention recently that it is easy to forget the reason for having IT in the first place – to deliver information to businesspeople. Clearly, the mission of an effective IT department goes beyond merely providing technology; modern IT departments are expected to deliver information that is vital to the enterprise’s success. In this TeleBriefing, DMS Research Director Lyn Robison talks about ten axioms of data management that can lead IT departments to better information delivery.

New Trends in Virtual Environment High Availability

Data Center Strategies

September, 2008 -- Virtualization continues to spread through enterprise IT like wild fire. More and more critical workloads are being virtualized resulting in a greater number of business critical processes running on a given physical server, in turn demanding higher availability for those systems. High availability solutions for virtual environments are in various stages of maturity and development throughout the industry. In this TeleBriefing, Service Director Richard Jones will review the best practices for building highly available virtual environments and will discuss the progress, or lack thereof, in high availability solutions. The state of continuous availability and orchestration solutions will also be reviewed.

An Introduction to Taxonomies, Ontologies, and Folksonomies

Collaboration and Content Strategies

September, 2008 -- Taxonomies, ontologies, and folksonomies are starting to gain favor as a way to improve collaboration and information management. As disparate departments increasingly share information, it’s crucial that they use a common vocabulary—otherwise, they’re just talking at each other, rather than with each other. Research Director Guy Creese will discuss taxonomies, ontologies, and folksonomies, describe how they’re interrelated, and offer recommendations on how to begin leveraging their power.

Managing in a Down Economy

Executive Advisory Program

September, 2008 -- Managing in a technical environment is challenging for the best of IT managers. During times of growth, the sheer number of projects to complete, problems to solve and employees to motivate, can be overwhelming. While the work is difficult, rewards can be substantial as IT provides the technology that runs the organization. Unfortunately during lean times, managing becomes even more difficult as the IT team, once strategic, looks more like a cost cutting target. In addition IT employees struggle as priorities change, projects are redefined and rumors become commonplace. In this TeleBriefing, strategists Ken Anderson and Jack Santos discuss how to manage staff in a down economy.

OSGi in the Enterprise

Application Platform Strategies

September, 2008 -- The OSGi Service Platform is a standard dynamic module system for Java. Already under adoption by most major platform vendors, OSGi is a disruptive technology that stands to transform the packaging, delivery, and management of Java applications and services. Extending the capabilities of the Java platform, OSGi supports the ability to deploy multiple versions of a module, discover new modules dynamically, and deploy modules without restarting the system. In this TeleBriefing, analyst Kirk Knoernschild will introduce the OSGi Service Platform and explore OSGi's place in the next generation Java application platform.

SOA Security: Control Architecture Design Scenarios

Security and Risk Management Strategies

September, 2008 -- Although service oriented architecture (SOA) changes the way that applications are designed and implemented, it still has many similarities with "traditional" distributed applications and networking. Creating an additional layer of abstraction and complexity on top of existing infrastructure, the SOA ecosystem requires implementation of technical controls to mitigate the risks it creates. After providing a brief SOA primer, Analyst Ramon Krikken discusses technological risks and associated control options by providing scenarios that follow the evolution of an example SOA ecosystem.

Next Generation Ethernet Switches

Network and Telecom Strategies

August, 2008 -- Over the past few years there have been relatively few changes to enterprise-class Ethernet switches. But now with 10GBase-T driving down the cost of 10 Gigabit Ethernet LANs, combined with growing use of Ethernet for storage networking as a substitute for Fibre Channel, and a need for greater bandwidth/availability and lower power consumption, vendors such as Cisco and Juniper have recently introduced entirely new families of Ethernet switches. In this TeleBriefing, Research Director Dave Passmore will examine the latest products and discuss what’s really new about next generation switches.

Addressing IdM Challenges in SharePoint

Identity and Privacy Strategies

August, 2008 -- Microsoft SharePoint is becoming a favorite collaboration platform for business users and a challenge for IT professionals to manage. In this TeleBriefing, VP and service director Gerry Gebel will discuss when SharePoint identity and access management becomes an issue based on some limitations in the product. He will also discuss some of the many aftermarket solutions that are attempting to address management of SharePoint access when it contains sensitive or regulated content.

Federated Master Data Management

Data Management Strategies

August, 2008 -- In this TeleBriefing, Data Management Strategies Senior Analyst Joe Bugajski discusses the federated design solution for Master Data Management (MDM). Master data is information that is critically important to business operations. Typical examples of master data includes customers, products, and suppliers. MDM is a long-term and close collaboration between IT and business whereby IT builds and maintains systems containing master data that business certifies as uniformly accurate and reliable. IT professionals often find that master data centralization (e.g., a single customer list in one location) is politically unwise, architecturally infeasible, or cost prohibitive. To address these objections, IT professionals should use data integration technology to develop “Federated MDM”. Fortunately, data integration software tools for MDM are plentiful. Unfortunately, many such tools employ metadata repositories that are too tightly integrated into data integration software to provide MDM services. This TeleBriefing will help IT professionals to understand federated MDM and overcome its fundamental challenges.

iSCSI vs. FCoE

Data Center Strategies

August, 2008 -- As server virtualisation projects expand, and SANs proliferate, an inexpensive and simplified SAN implementation is needed to support the dynamic data centre. iSCSI has been positioned to address the needs of a dynamic data centre and is expected to continue to make inroads into the SAN environment. However, fibre channel (FC) based SAN’s still abound and are not going away anytime soon. In response to iSCSI’s popularity, the FC industry is seeking to extend FC connectivity over Ethernet by creating the “Fibre Channel over Ethernet” (FCoE) specification. This presentation explores the relationship of iSCSI and FCOE connectivity, their value and future expectations.

SharePoint: The Good, the Bad, and the UGLI

Collaboration and Content Strategies

July, 2008 -- Is SharePoint good or bad? Like any other product there are pros and cons, but avoiding pain from SharePoint depends more on an organization’s situational factors than the product itself. In this replay of a popular session from Catalyst 2008, Collaboration and Content Strategies Service Director Craig Roth paints a clear picture of the good capabilities of SharePoint, its holes, and, most importantly, the parts that can get ugly if great care is not taken. These are the parts that can be controlled and are represented by the acronym UGLI: Usage, Governance, Liveliness (of the operational environment), and Implementation.

Database Model Alternatives: A Reality Check on Relational, XML, and Other Database Models

Data Management Strategies

July, 2008 -- Debate about the merits of different database models -- including relational, XML, web (hypertext), columnar, and others -- is on the rise. Some believe the "one-size-fits-all" relational database management system (DBMS) era is ending, in favor of specialized approaches (e.g., for business intelligence); others believe XML will become ubiquitous, relegating traditional DBMSs to a legacy role. In this telebriefing, DMS Research Director Peter O'Kelly presents a framework for understanding the database model distinctions, and explains how extended relational and hypertext database models are pivotal for future enterprise data management endeavors.

Information-Centric Security in Five Years

Security and Risk Management Strategies

July, 2008 -- Today, organizations are busy with tactical encryption and content filtering initiatives but generally lack a strategic approach for managing security from an information-centric perspective. But cybercrime and regulatory activity will not stop, breaches will still happen, and information will still leak. Over the next five years, organizations will be forced to exert even tighter controls over sensitive information and make serious efforts at data governance. This presentation will discuss which controls and approaches will be most effective in matching protection imperatives with business realities. Principal Analyst Dan Blum will present this replay of his Catalyst 2008 break-out session.

SOA Report Card

Application Platform Strategies

July, 2008 -- Everyone seems to be doing SOA, but how many organizations are doing it well? Is anyone making a passing grade? Burton Group has been conducting intensive research into real-world SOA initiatives. The research is focused on SOA planning and execution. It compares and contrasts top-down and bottom-up approaches. It explores organizational and cultural impediments. It examines governance strategies. It also looks at business models and metrics. We’ll present our findings from this research in this telebriefing. Learn what works and what doesn’t:

• Where do you start?
• How do you identify, model, and describe services?
• Is an ESB a prerequisite? What about WS-* versus REST?
• When do you really need to establish governance?
• How much governance is required?
• What changes are required to the organization, funding models, development practices, etc?
• How do you measure success?

The Best of NTS at Catalyst 2008 - Wireless Everything: NTS Keynote Presentation

Network and Telecom Strategies

July, 2008 -- Networking and telecommunications is in the midst of a major transformation. With approximately three billion mobile phones extant, one of every two people on earth now has a wireless communications device. Most new PCs are now laptops with built-in Wi-Fi, and most enterprise voice calls are now made from mobile phones. While wired network infrastructures are hardly disappearing, users have shown a clear preference for mobility and wireless communications. Organizations must address issues such as mobile devices management, security, applications development, fixed mobile convergence, and mobile operator service selection

A Relationship Layer for the Web (and enterprises, too)

Identity and Privacy Strategies

July, 2008 -- This TeleBriefing is a replay of research directory Bob Blakley's Catalyst session: In real life, we are introduced, we form relationships, we disclose information in the context of those relationships, and we act. In the Web 2.0 world, we are introduced, we disclose information, and we act. The relationships, and the expectations they create and embody, are what keep us safe. The absence of relationships makes us unsafe. We need a relationship layer for the web. Without it, the Web 2.0 Identity layer will remain a vestigial organ. This talk will describe what relationships look like in real life, how they might be modeled in the online environment, and how they would add value to environments which already have identity built in.